


Ain't Nobody Listenin'

by belmanoir



Series: I'm still here and I'm still itching [2]
Category: Hard Core Logo (1996)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-09
Updated: 2012-04-09
Packaged: 2017-11-03 08:12:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Joe Dick was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. His body was stolen a year later and has never been recovered.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ain't Nobody Listenin'

**Author's Note:**

> Written for lj_comm=hard_core_hero, prompt #14: "If your singer ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." Beta'd by Sonia.
> 
>  
> 
> **Warning: disturbing content.**

Billy keeps dreaming about Joe in the suit. He's dead, of course. Been dead for a while, the bullet hole crusted and decaying in his forehead. And he's wearing the suit they buried him in. He's wearing Mr. Mulgrew's horn-rimmed glasses too and carrying a ledger. He keeps giving Billy tax advice. "You're finally putting away some cash," he says. "You just got it in savings? What the fuck, Billiam, aren't you thinking about the fucking future?"

Every night Billy tries to ignore him. Tries and tries to ignore him till he can't anymore, till all that's in his fucking head is _JoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJoeJOE_. "Shut the _fuck_ up!" 

Joe gives him his most spiteful leer. "Brains, cuntface." But unless his ex-girlfriends were right and Billy really does think with his dick, it's not his brains Joe grabs.

###

It goes on for months. Billy starts feeling tired all the fucking time. He's afraid to try sleeping pills, they're too much like drugs. He starts being clumsy, messing up the riffs in practice sessions. He can play when he's falling down drunk, but looks like insomnia is another story.

"Are you _hungover_?" Jenny asks, finally.

He isn't. But he will be if this doesn't fucking stop. "Nah," he says, taking a swig of coffee. It's stopped helping, mostly makes him shaky. "Just tired. I can't sleep."

Her face softens. "Hey, if you ever want to talk about Joe--"

"I don't."

"Leave him alone," Molly, the obligatory lesbian drummer, says. Joe would probably like her. Billy doesn't. "Are we his mom now? Deal with your shit, Billy."

###

Another dream. Another blindingly bright L.A. morning. "I'm tired of waking up tired, waking up tired," Billy sings, covering his eyes with one arm. No one sings it back.

###

"Fine!" he shouts. "Fine, I'll do it, I'll get you out of the suit, but then it's over, okay? We are _done_. I do this, you leave me the fuck alone!"

Zombie Joe whoops and straightens his glasses smugly. "I didn't hear anything after 'I'll do it,'" he says.

Billy doesn't argue. He knows by now Joe's never gonna leave him the fuck alone.

Joe raises his hands and drops his head. He's time-traveling. 

"Hey, what the fuck?" Billy says. "Where did Joe go?"

He wakes up. For a second he thinks, _Where did Joe go?_ Then he thinks, _I will **not** fucking cry._ He doesn't.

###

He tells the band his mom's cancer is worse and he's gotta go to Vancouver for the weekend. His mom's cancer _is_ worse, in fact, but who gives a shit? Serves the fucking cunt right. He calls her anyway, drives all night and most of the next day, doesn't sleep at all. He dozes in rest stops a couple times, not long enough to dream. Drinks shitty coffee and tries to keep himself awake at the wheel by singing. He's halfway through Oregon when he realizes he's been stuck on "Country Roads" for the last fifteen kilometers. He stops. His mom cries when she sees him and he tries to act normal.

That night he drives to the cemetery. Puts on a coat, gloves, a hat, and pulls his mom's shovel and a bucket (because no way he's not gonna throw up at least once here, this is a year-old corpse, and he doesn't plan to let DNA evidence ruin his career) out of the back of the car.

He remembers exactly where Joe's grave is, which surprises him. He looks at that stupid-ass weeping angel and for the first time in a fucking _year_ , he feels awake. He kicks the motherfucker over, grins, and starts digging.

That lasts fifteen minutes tops. Then he's sore and bored and dirty and really, really fucking tired. 

Finally he's got a big pile of dirt and the coffin. Takes a deep breath. Kicks it open. He swallows, but it doesn't make the sick feeling in his throat go down. He'd been thinking of Joe's body as if it were Dream Zombie Joe. But actually it's worse, because it's not looking at him. It's not talking. "Okay," he says. "Okay."

Undressing Joe is really fucking weird and horrible. Unzipping Joe's fly, unbuttoning his shirt. Apparently they mostly embalmed the visible bits of Joe, because it's way worse under the suit. But Billy keeps going, gets down to Joe's boxers. Oh holy fucking god, he _can't_. He can't look at Joe's--he grits his teeth and pulls them off. He _doesn't_ look.

He stands there next to Joe's naked corpse and realizes he has no plans for what to actually do with the body. Which is pretty fantastically stupid given how carefully he planned up to this point. Okay. There's a new-dug grave not too far away, right? He heaves the body out of the grave as gently as he can and climbs out. Yep. Maybe twenty feet away, John Smith. Billy snickers. John fucking Smith. _Beloved husband and father._ Yeah. Joe would laugh his ass off to think of Mrs. Smith and the little ones bringing flowers and talking sweetly to dear old husband and daddy while Joe Dick mooned them through the dirt.

Digging down far enough to bury Joe is boring again. This whole fucked-up grave-robbing experience--it's the kind of thing that would be fun if Joe was there. 

It's several minutes before it hits him that actually, Joe _is_ there, and then he's glad he brought the bucket. It's while he's throwing up that he starts to suspect he may have issues that have nothing to do with the suit and everything to do with the fact that his best friend fucked him up the ass exactly once and he's been thinking about it ever since. Maybe he's got issues that have nothing to do with that either. He's stealing a body because a dream zombie told him to.

Whatever.

###

When it's done he goes home, showers, cleans the shower, washes his clothes twice, washes the shovel, cleans the car, cleans and cleans and cleans. It's so there won't be any evidence. Then he falls into bed and sleeps. He doesn't dream. He doesn't dream about Joe. 

He wakes up feeling actually rested. Feeling awake and hungry and maybe Joe kept his end of a bargain for once in his life. His death, whatever. He's left Billy alone. Billy's alone.

And just like that, Billy's bawling. Once he caught Joe crying. To this day he has no fucking clue why. Joe was trying to be quiet about it but when Billy walked in he stopped trying. "Hey, I fucking feel like crying I'm gonna fucking cry," Joe said, his voice swollen and rough. "Got a problem with that, cuntface?"

Billy tried to decide if he should ask what was wrong. Could he do it without sounding like he gave a shit? Would Joe tell him or just call him a fag? And did he really want to know anyway? "Nah," he said. "But your dick called. It wants to know when it can come home."

"Ahh, you're just trying to make me prove I still got it," Joe said, still kinda heaving and sniffling but tilting his chin up at Billy anyway, giving him that asshole grin with wet lips. "'Sides, what's more punk than snot?" He leaned over and blew his nose in Billy's hair.


End file.
